To my great shame, I haven't read the book, but based on the different movie adaptations I've seen, another interpretation could be simply that he ate some dinner that disagreed with him, and then just had some bad dreams for the second panel.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!
on second notes: i have been waiting, uh, 10,480 days to use that pun. i even started cooking fancy french gravies at holiday meals and family dinners. does anyone compliment my gravies? no. they always compliment my sauces so i have to wait.
28.69 (nice) years is a long way. Good gravy.
What I never got about this, was it a common thing at the time for bad food to cause bad dreams? I’ve had plenty of indigestion and related discomfort but I don’t think it’s ever caused bad dreams.
You never had Victorian England food poisoning though. If the food manages to make you sicker than the poop river to notice it, I'm sure it was a bad time.
I don't know about common, but it is very much a thing that certain foods can make for weird dreams. Usually, it's food that can really mess with your blood sugar while you sleep, like pasta or sweets, or things that can produce mild discomfort that then keeps your mind a little bit awake and dreaming at times, like spicy food.
Of course there's a huge variety of foods that can have those same generic effects, but needless to say, spoiled or undercooked food can also make for a bit of an uncomfortable night!
I’m reading it for the first time this year, downloaded for free from Gutenberg.org.
Grabbed it right after watching Muppet Christmas Carol and once I finish I’ll watch Spirited. Scrooged is of course saved for Christmas Eve.
Also been thinking about throwing into the mix that one episode of Real Ghostbusters where they go back in time and unwittingly catch the three ghosts which screws up the timeline because of the unrepentant Scrooge that results.
I have read it many times and I agree that the story is about a dream/nightmare Ebeneezer has on Christmas Eve. I always saw the story as an old rich man had who does not have much longer to live reflects on his life. He decides he still has time to try and change with what little time he has left.
I think it really could have been framed many ways. Many people reflect on their lives on New Year's Eve or their birthdays. I think Dickens just decided to choose Christmas for his story.
EDIT: In short, man nearing end of life has existential crisis in dream.
I like the idea, however improbable, of the redeemable miser reformed by seeing the regrets of his past, and only a monster doesn't cry at seeing the Muppet Christmas Carol, or better still, Scrooged.
But.
Why Christmas? Could be any day, why Christmas? I think it's to innoculate us against legitimate criticism what a shitty and stressful and endless presents you don't need time it is. Because if you don't participate, you're a scrooge or a grinch. Terms they don't use against people who are actual Scrooges year round.
I say, someone needs to make a film about someone being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past (playing with the dogs in the snow and that's a perfect Christmas), Ghost of Christmas Present (stress buying), and Ghost of Christmas Future (no planet).
But that just makes me ... something, I dunno. Maybe someone will have a term for it.
I don't think Christmas was as much about gift giving in Dickens time. I think it was more a time that your family gets to be together. He even alludes to this with Bob Crachit's daughter having to slave away at work and only getting to see family on Christmas. They don't really do gifts in the story, they just have a small meal together. It isn't until Scrooge changes his mindset that gifts start being much of a thing in the story.
Dickens was always focused on the poverty and suffering of the industrial age. I think he would object to our sense today of Christmas being so focused on gifts and not on time with family and friends
Why Christmas?
Because people tend to remember what they did on Christmas, so the whole "seeing your regret" thing works a whole lot better.
Also, it can't be any other day, because there's no ghost of the April 14th past.
few other holidays are both sacred and secular.
Also, it can't be any other day, because there's no ghost of the April 14th past.
Yet
So who needs to be murdered?
I volunteer as tribute under the stipulation that it is done via mortal combat and that I'll be giving it my all. If I survive well regardless we have a ghost.
I think of so many days of visiting regrets, but I do take your point.
Or it's a day of family and remembrance. The story is not a contemporary one, it was written and set in Victorian times.
While still somewhat mercantile in nature, it wasn't nearly as commercialized as it is now.
More importantly, Christmas wasn't really a THING in England at that point. It was mostly seen as an idle, rural thing, and it hadn't been too long ago that Christmas was banned as a practice in the UK. Dickens wrote with the intention of bringing back the Christmases he remembered of his youth to the general awareness, and it worked.
Christmas wasn't really a THING in England at that point
??? It absolutely was a thing. A huge thing.
it hadn't been too long ago that Christmas was banned as a practice in the UK
Christmas celebrations were banned for a 2 year period under Cromwell, almost 200 years earlier. Even then it saw huge backlash and public resistance.
Dickens wrote with the intention of bringing back the Christmases he remembered of his youth
They never went away.
Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol because he was very concerned with the plight of poor people, the working class not having enough time with their families, child labour, and the wealthy keeping all their money to themselves with no regard for those below them.
I truly don't know where you got the idea from that Christmas wasn't a thing, that Christmas was banned shortly before, or that Christmas was a thing in Dickens' youth but not his adulthood.
After watching "the man who invented christmas" or some such movie I also got the impression that it was elevated in the 1800s to being more than just being one of the feast days, observed by some.
Definitely true. It's what the story got appropriated as that rubs me the wrong way.
Yeah, I made a YT video about this.
This year is the first year I am actively not participating in gift-giving. The two people I regularly exchange gifts with are in a tough spot. One just had a child. The other was out of a job for 14 months and is picking up the pieces. I used to give money to my parents, but they are "borrowing" my car and have been for a year and a half, so they're basically being given 50 dollars a day in free car rental.
So why spend the money? I have decorations already that I just reuse, so if I spent money, it would be purely based on the pressures of culture and tradition, which is stupid.
I'm still going to pop on my Christmas movies, cook a nice dinner, and enjoy the day... but I wish people weren't driving themselves further into debt based solely on tradition.
Or….
- “I’m afraid to spend money, even on myself.”
- “Your fears are ruining your life and hurting people around you.”
- “I’ve learned to face my fears for my own good and the good of people around me!”
Also: there were four ghosts, not three. Everyone forgets poor old Mr. Marley.
There were 6 ghosts, not 4. You probably forgot Ignorance and Want.
There were a lot more ghosts than that. You probably forgot this part:
Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went.
But did those ghosts actively visit and interact with him? As I recall they were more or less just props for Marley to make his point.
Props for the Ghost of Christmas Present, and no, they didn't. They just peered at him pathetically from under his robes.
You suck … at Pacman.
We have a production of the show every year here in Kansas City that I used to love to go see, and I was even a cast member for ten-plus years as a kid and a teenager.
Five years ago tickets were $40. Now? The least expensive seats are $110.
And that has happened with everything, including rent, food, utilities, and health care. I kinda just wish everyone would take this year off and buy nothing to make a statement about capitalism.
Crazy how one night of “booOOOOooo” results in a redistribution of wealth.
The only way to get rich people to cooperate is to put them in fear for their life?
If we believe Dickens, even fear for the afterlife should be sufficient. But I mean, better safe than sorry.
Most people are indoctrined into fear of the afterlife. It's obvious it doesn't work.
You can see how afraid they are of death by how much effort they put in to extend their lives.
See what he needed was one of pacmans power pellets.